Indiana University Olympians. David Woods
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“I just numbed my nervous system,” she said. “I got out with everybody; I just didn’t move.”
She finished ninth with 6,150 points, far off the bronze-winning score of 6,527. Gold medalist Denise Lewis of Great Britain scored 6,584, or just seven points more than Nathan had at Götzis in 1999. Nathan, standing next to Lewis, was the first to congratulate her when standings were announced.
It was the lowest-scoring heptathlon since the inaugural one at Los Angeles in 1984, when the top heptathletes were absent because of the Soviet-led boycott. Nathan was the top non-European finisher.
“Two days and eleven hours each day, we have nothing. There’s nothing in the tank,” Nathan said. “Our bodies are a mess. We’re a mess. We’re sore. We’re just so fatigued, it’s not even funny. When your body gives out on you, then your mind and heart kick in.”
Nathan had begun the year in a quest to make it to the Winter Olympics, training with bobsledders in Park City, Utah. She had the requisite size, strength, and speed, and initial results were astounding. Her push times were coming within fifteen hundredths of a second of those by the men.
She teamed with driver Bonny Warner and finished second in the national championships behind Jill Bakken, who went on to win a gold medal at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics. Nathan said the sensation of sledding was like that of riding a roller coaster with eyes closed.
“I never would have thought in a billion years about bobsled,” she said.
She did not pursue bobsled because she was not done with track and field, although it must have seemed like she was still on a roller coaster. She won her second national heptathlon title in 2001 despite arriving in Eugene, Oregon, at 4:30 a.m. on the day she was to open competition. Her flight was delayed in Denver by a hailstorm. After five hours of sleep, she competed in borrowed clothes, her college running shoes, and spikes a half inch too small. She nonetheless scored 6,174 points. At the World Championships in Edmonton, Alberta, she was seventh.
She tried once more to make it to an Olympics, and she said it was her “farewell to the sport.” She was fifth in the 2004 trials at Sacramento. Coincidentally, she was again third heading into the 800 and scored 6,020 points, her best since 2001. She was 106 points behind third place.
“I’m an Olympian because I gutted my way through that,” Nathan said. “It wasn’t because I was the most talented. I lost all the time. I gutted my way to the Olympics. Period.”
She became an educator in Indianapolis, first taking a position at Warren Central High School and later becoming an assistant principal at Pike High School. At Pike, she coached teams to girls’ state titles in 2012 and 2015 and runner-up finishes in 2014 and 2016. She became the first woman in Indiana to both compete for and coach a state championship team.
Nathan left coaching after 2017, staying until Lynna Irby left Pike. When Irby was a freshman, Nathan said it was her job to put the sprinter in position to make history, and the teenager did so. Irby achieved the unprecedented feat of becoming a four-time Indiana champion in the 100, 200, and 400 meters (2014–17).
Nathan might have achieved more in her own track and field career but expressed no disappointment. Her legacy is secure. She attributed temporary setbacks to stubbornness in wrestling with God.
“Finally pulled it all together in 1999 and 2000. Now I see it for the way it was,” she said. “He was trying to save my life. It’s my story. It’s my testimony. And I’m saved by it.”
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